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Despite political pressure, St. Patty's parade will stay straight in Boston

Boston's St. Patrick's Day Parade will take place again this year, minus homosexual groups, despite their repeated demands.

In the 1990's homosexuals wanted to march in the parade, and when organizers refused, they sued.

Brian Camenker of Mass Resistance tells OneNewsNow the lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 9-0 parade organizers could choose who participates.

That's because it's a privately operated event. The parade is
sponsored by the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council. This year's
parade is March 16.

"So
this year the new mayor, Marty Walsh, who is a 1,000 percent
pro-homosexual, decided that he was going to help the homosexual
activists force the issue on this," Camenker recalls.

There were discussions with parade organizers, who stated what they
have said before: homosexuals can march, just without banners and signs
proclaiming a homosexual message.

"If you just want to show up and march with a normal group and don't talk about that, they didn't care," Camenker explains.

According to the parade website,
organizers said they were deceived by a homosexual rights group, Mass
Equality, that claimed 20 members of gay rights group LGBT Veterans of
Equality wanted to march in the parade.

As the homosexual groups were lobbying for a compromise, parade
organizers learned there are not 20 members in the veterans group and,
in fact, could not confirm such a group even existed.

"It became evident to us we were being misled by them and that is where negotiations ended," the Veterans Council stated in a press release.

Two Catholic schools decided to keep their floats parked when it
appeared homosexual groups were gaining an edge, but officials decided
to stick with their policy so their floats will roll again this year.

Homosexuals have their own so-called pride event in June.

- See more at:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/culture/2014/03/11/despite-political-pressure-st-pattys-parade-will-stay-straight-in-boston#.Ux8CToV_iM8

New York City mayor to protest St. Patty’s Day march

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is going against the grain yet again.

The newly elected mayor says that he will not take part in this
year’s largest St. Patrick’s Day parade because organizers won’t allow
participants to carry gay pride signs, CBS New York reports.

Parade organizers said that gay rights activists can participate in
the parade, but signage is forbidden since it detracts from the event’s focus on Irish heritage.

“I will be participating in a number of other events
to honor the Irish heritage of this city and the contributions of Irish
Americans, but I simply disagree with the organizers of that parade in
their exclusion of some individuals in this city,” said de Blasio.

Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio’s predecessor, marched in the St. Patrick’s Day event during his tenure, despite calls from gay rights groups for a mayoral boycott.

In a related decision, de Blasio said he would not heed demands from gay rights groups who demanded that uniformed city employees be barred from participating in the parade.

“I respect the right of our city workers to march in uniform, period,” de Blasio said.

Organizers of the parade, which ventures down 5th Avenue, say that
the event is “our country’s oldest and proudest Irish tradition.” It was
first held in 1762.

I don't understand what they want. Do they just want to participate in the St. Patrick's Day aspect of the parade and they happen to be gay? If so then I see no reason why they shouldn't participate. If, however, they want to participate in a "Gay Pride" sort of way then I don't think it is appropriate since that is not the focus of the parade.

Boston
Mayor Martin Walsh said this week he's trying to broker a deal with his
city's parade organizers to allow a group of gay military veterans to
march. The son of Irish immigrants said Wednesday that allowing gay
groups to participate is "long overdue." In New York, Mayor Bill de
Blasio earlier said he's skipping the nation's largest St. Patrick's Day
parade in Manhattan because participants are not allowed to carry signs
or banners that identify them as gay.

Boston parade organizers
appear unwilling to budge. John Hurley, the plaintiff in a case in which
the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in 1995 to allow organizers to
keep out gay and lesbian groups, said "it's final" that gay groups will
continue to be excluded.

Hurley said Walsh, who marched in the
parade when he was a Democratic state legislator before being elected
mayor in November, "is not in a position" to overturn the court's
decision.

Lead parade organizer Philip Wuschke Jr. said gay people
are not prohibited from marching with other groups. But he said
organizers do not want the parade to turn into a demonstration for a
particular group.

"The theme of the parade is St. Patrick's Day.
It is not a sexually oriented parade," he said. "All we want to do is
have a happy parade. The parade is a day of celebration, not
demonstration."

Walsh's predecessor, longtime Mayor Thomas Menino, had refused to participate in the parade after the 1995 decision.

The
New York City parade, a tradition that predates the city itself, draws
more than 1 million people each March 17 to Fifth Avenue, one of
Manhattan's most famous thoroughfares, to watch about 200,000
participants. It has long been a stop on the city's political trail and
includes marching bands, Irish dancers and thousands of uniformed city
workers.

"I will be participating in a number of other events to
honor the Irish heritage of this city," de Blasio said during a news
conference this month. "But I simply disagree with the organizers of
that parade."

Since the 1990s, the event's ban on gay signs and
banners has spurred protests and litigation and led to the creation of
an alternative, gay-friendly St. Patrick's Day parade in the city's
Queens borough. In recent years, several elected officials — including
de Blasio when he was the city's elected public advocate — attended the
inclusive parade and boycotted the traditional parade.

Though de
Blasio's predecessor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was a staunch supporter
of same-sex marriage rights, he still marched in the Fifth Avenue parade
all 12 years he was in office.

The parade dates to 1762, more
than a century before all five boroughs linked to form modern New York
City. It is run by a private organization, and judges have said the
organizers have a First Amendment right to choose participants in their
event. The organizers have ruled that some groups, such as colleges or
civic organizations, can identify themselves, but LGBT groups cannot.

The
new speaker of the City Council, Melissa Mark-Viverito, this week
banned any council signage at the parade, though individual members can
still march. She will not.

De Blasio has resisted calls from some
advocates to ban city workers — such as the NYPD or FDNY — from marching
while wearing their uniforms or carrying signs. He has said he will
once again march in the alternative parade in Queens.

Boston’s exclusionary history began in 1992 and 1993, when local courts ruled in favor
of the Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston—known
as GLIB—which wanted to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. The
massive procession through Southie—Boston’s traditionally Irish,
predominantly Catholic neighborhood—is heavy on veterans groups, police
departments, and local politicians. Although AWVC’s parade—which
attracts more than 1 million spectators each year—is privately
organized, it is partially funded with taxpayer dollars. (The Boston Globe reports that the 2013 parade cost the city more than $315,000 in police overtime alone.) Consequently, courts agreed that the organizers had unfairly discriminated against GLIB.

GLIB’s legal victory didn’t translate to a warm reception from parade-goers, though. Gay marchers faced slurs, spit, smoke bombs, and snowballs from dozens of spectators along the parade route, in what the Boston Globe
referred to as “a 5-mile gantlet of hostility that sometimes threatened
to erupt into wide-scale violence.” Thousands more parade-goers, some
of them wearing T-shirts bearing the words “90 Years Without Queers,”
turned their backs when the group passed. Riot police marched alongside
the GLIB contingent in order to maintain calm.

After 92 consecutive years of celebrating Boston’s Hibernian heritage, the AWVC canceled the 1994 parade
rather than allow LGBTQ Irish-Americans to participate. The organizers
were adamant in their homophobia. Former Mayor Thomas Menino asked as
many as eight other local organizations to take over the planning of the
parade, but all stood together in anti-gay solidarity. In 1995, the
AWVC appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which (correctly) recognized the private organizers’ right to exclude groups.
(If this seems unreasonable, imagine a Gay Pride parade being forced to
include Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church.) Of course, just because
the parade organizers can exclude gays, that doesn’t mean they should.

Nowadays, many cities, including Boston and New York, host
segregated parades. In Boston, LGBT groups march an hour after the
AWVC-sponsored parade, in a separate event organized by Veterans for Peace. Politicians struggle with the consequences of boycotting the main parade, attempting to placate both the gay and Irish communities. (Across the Atlantic in Dublin, none of this is an issue; gay-themed floats are regularly included in their St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.)

Most parade-goers seem largely unconcerned with the ban on gay
groups, turning out in droves to spend the day participating in
traditional song and dance, swilling green beer, and enjoying general
merriment with family and friends. It’s good craic. Corporations also seem unconcerned about the exclusionary policies: Westin, Sam Adams, and Gillette are among the many sponsors supporting Boston’s parade.

This year, Boston organizers point to a vague dress code—suits or
military uniforms only—that gay participants must conform to. Never mind
that the official parade website shows a Darth Vader/Storm Trooper contingent
participating in years past. If you squint really hard, I guess that
qualifies as a military uniform, but it seems safe to assume that
MassEquality—the LGBTQ group fighting for gay representation—will face
heightened scrutiny about adhering to the dress code if gays are allowed
to march.

NYC Mayor DiBlasio did march with a St. Pat's parade in
Woodside, Queens last weekend, one that is inclusive to GLBTQ's, and
various ethnic groups - and proud to be so. More...

-Leon

People who oppose LGBTQ participation in these St. Patrick’s Day
commemorations like to point out that the cities already host Gay Pride
events. Meanwhile, Philip J. Wuschke Jr., one of the organizers of the
Boston parade, told the Globe,
“Messages of LGBT equality are not in keeping with the messages of
pride in Irish heritage the parade promotes.” Apparently, being both gay
and Irish is too much identity for one person to have.

Update, March 6: According to the Boston Herald,
the Westin Boston Waterfront has asked parade organizers to remove its
name from their website. Similarly, Gillette confirmed that its support
consists of "limited use" of a company-owned parking lot on parade day.
Both sponsors' logos were prominently featured on the parade's website
as late as March 5; those logos are no longer visible. A full list of
supporting organizations is available here.

Send me email updates about messages I've received on the site and the latest news from The CafeMom Team.
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